Sony: Cloud Streaming Has Larger Overall Carbon Footprint Than Downloads and Physical Games

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Sony has released a new report in which they measured how much of a carbon footprint each type of gaming produces. The report found that cloud streaming has the overall largest carbon footprint, but the game’s carbon footprint depends on a variety of factors.

While Sony noted the carbon emissions can vary by the country you reside in and how their infrastructure is powered, when gaming for over eight hours (on average) they found disc-based games or digital downloads produce less carbon emissions than cloud streaming, overall.


There’s a couple of caveats here, namely that streaming games is still the best option for gaming less than 4-5 hours compared to digital downloads, however disc-based gaming has an even larger margin for carbon emissions at 20 hours.

Sony also noted that for an average PS4 game you can expect 0.05kg of CO2 emitted per hour, compared to an average PC game emitting 0.09kg of CO2 per hour. This pales in comparison to driving to the movie theater, which comes in at nearly 2.5kg of CO2 per hour.

The new report was conducted over five years and in partnership with Playing for the Planet Alliance, and noted they’ve managed to save 17.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions with the PS4, due to its lower power consumption when compared to the PS3. The company also noted they’re on track to reduce their carbon footprint to 30 million tonnes overall by 2030.


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